CardSpeed Website Project

Introduction

I have owned an HP iPAQ since Autumn 2004. I use the machine almost every day to organise my life. I tend to run a fair amount of digital mapping and routing software when I am out and about. These kinds of software tend to require large amounts of storage for the map files. They also tend to be quite IO intensive as they have to take sections of map from the storage and then display it on screen. When TomTom Navigator 5 was released it required more storage space for the map files and therefore I needed to buy a larger SD flash memory card.

I had noticed for quite some time that the speeds quoted on flash memory cards were often only indicative of the performance of the card under laboratory conditions. What I needed was a way to measure and report on the performance of flash cards when being used in Pocket PC devices.

For several years a program called Pocket Mechanic has been able to speed test cards. However there wasn't any way for people to compare these with other people's results. While the program shipped with a small set of sample results they were not that comprehensive and also out of date with current card sizes.

Objective

Create a website where people can find out how fast various forms of flash memory perform in real-world Pocket PC devices.

Intended Audience

• People looking to buy a new flash memory card
• Technology enthusiasts
• Pocket PC users

Features

• Simple interface
• Results entry moderation system
• Google and Amazon adverts for revenue generation

Technology

This website made use of a number of techniques that were new to me.

Firstly -moz-border-radius. This is a custom extension to CSS by the Mozilla team that lets you round the corners of boarders. I used this on several of the block elements in the site to make it look less boxy.

Secondly I worked very hard on the issue of double submits and stale pages when pressing the back button in some browsers. I learnt about a concept that has been dubbed Post-Redirect-Get. This states that after every post you should redirect the client so that the client performs a GET before any content is sent to the client. This stops POST data being resubmitted if someone refreshes the resultant page.